One measure of a masterpiece is the amount of abuse it can take. The hit tunes from dozens of operas have been ragged, jived, jazzed, boogied, swung and popped—and most of them have emerged little the worse. Carmen, especially, has survived countless transmutations. Geraldine Farrar, Theda Bara and Rita Hayworth all vamped their way through screen versions; Bea Lillie mauled it at the Met. Maya Plisetskaya danced it to an orchestration including 47 percussion instruments. Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones gave Bizet's gypsy girl a surname and set her to work packing parachutes in the Deep South.
A rock version was inevitable. The Naked Carmen is a rock extravaganza in which Bizet's score is emotionally stripped, musically raped and symbolically incinerated in a simulated atomic blast of electronic caterwauling. Written, arranged and produced for Mercury Records by Composer John Corigliano and Record Producer David Hess, The Naked Carmen regards Carmen as a Women's Lib heroine. "Free, honest, a hippie traveling around like the gypsies in Spain," Hess explains. "But Micaela is a bitch, a real castrating female. In the opera she minces up and whines, 'Here's a kiss from your mother.' Now what kind of crummy blackmail is that, anyway? Don José is like nothing—we give him his Flowurie Song (sic), and he sings it on an old busted acoustic record. That's all he deserves." Other innovations: a kazoo obbligato in the Children's Chorus; a Habañera that begins with the Bach Chaconne and turns into a mélange of rock and Dixieland.
Halfway through, The Naked Carmen strips off its campy veneer and goes for the jugular. The March of the Toreadors suddenly becomes Deutschland über Alles as crowds roar "Sieg Heil!" Then Spiro Agnew denounces effete snobs—and the band plays Stars and Stripes Forever. It is as devastating as a knee in the groin. Children shrill the Gypsy Song, break into a tapdance and a pianist plays an ornate set of embellishments on the first phrase of the Habañera; he knows all the tricks but cannot remember the melody. The Card Song is swallowed by a monstrous Dies Irae, and everything ignites into a Moog-synthesized musical holocaust. The montage of electronic sound forms a requiem on the word "love," with tunes and characters zooming by like meteoric memories. After a final shriek, only Hess's voice remains, sadly singing: "That's how it is, that's how it will be —and how it must have been."
Says Corigliano: "The Naked Carmen started because Mercury wanted something that would sell a million copies. They never got over their 1812 Overture —the one with all the cannons—and they asked me to do a reorchestration of Carmen. I happen to think Bizet did it pretty well himself, so I said no. Then I met David. We got to talking about Prosper Mérimée's original Carmen story, which is tough as a documentary film. We decided to go about ten times as far as Rodion Shchedrin did in The Carmen Ballet that's being played to death nowadays. We wanted to really shock and mortify the opera crowd."